120.
120.
Yr Hen Ogledd.
A word meaning 'the Old North'.
The Cymry friends west of Mercia, the Cornwall friends west of Wessex, and even the Brace friends west of the Franks.
The history of this 'old' north, still revered with mystical hearts by the Celts and Gaels—the very roots of these light-infantry-loving friends—was in truth shorter than that of old Rome.
'Even our own old gods are newcomers compared to the God of Abraham (Judaism, Catholicism, Islam).'
Judged purely by age, were not Odin, Thor, and Hel far younger than the Catholic God? Of course, given the unrecorded nature of Germanic history, it was highly likely they were older than what was known...
It was just a figure of speech. Purely in terms of age, Osiris of Egypt was far older than the God of Abraham. And older still than Osiris of Egypt would be that Chu-Chu goddess of Africa, whose name was no longer even remembered.
At any rate.
The old dynasty of the Gorge Kingdom, which had carried on its line after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and by withstanding the invasions of the Angles and Picts.
Toward the place they called Alt Clut in their Gaelic tongue, I and the Norseman legion moved without hesitation.
Taking the road stretching from York to Bamburgh and Edinburgh, the host of 12,000 marched under the care of sunny weather and reached Bamburgh in a mere three days. After resupplying, they crossed beyond Edinburgh in a single day and met the army of Uhtred, who was holding the defensive line.
"Helgi Konungr! Welcome! Late though it may be, I congratulate you on your victory in the south!"
[Tak!]
The man's motion as he vigorously rendered the military salute carried a crisp precision.
Jarl Uhtred of Bamburgh now seemed to have fully embraced Norse culture.
"It was thanks to you holding Vernica so firmly, Jarl Uhtred. When the war ends, there will be great rewards—you and all the warriors of Vernica may look forward to them."
"It was a matter of defending our own homes; how could we hope for reward? Your words alone have already let Vernica feel the Konungr's benevolence."
Uhtred, a hexagonal commander somewhat like Refil, had apparently leveled up even his tongue under the influence of Ecgberht down in Dair.
Was that not a most satisfying evolution?
With a pleased heart I nodded, and Uhtred led me around to show me every part of the stoutly erected palisade.
The face of this Jarl, who had blocked the road leading to Edinburgh together with 5,000 troops of Vernika, bore the traces of long sleeplessness and extreme stress. Yet with my arrival, he wore an expression that seemed to have cast away about half his worries.
"The movements of Alt Clut in the west—ah, that is, the Gorge Kingdom bastards—have diminished, Konungr. Of course, a few small bands of light infantry still slip in to rustle livestock... but compared to before, we see no large-scale movements."
Since the north was blocked by the long and rough sea inlet called the Firth of Forth, only the west and south needed to be held.
Because the Gorge Kingdom's incursions, which had primarily come from the south, had grown less frequent, Uhtred was now paying more attention to the Kingdom of Scotland's forces on the western front. His voice was thick with exhaustion.
"I have heard as well of your plan to enter the Gorge Kingdom, but against them you must exercise far greater vigilance, my Konungr. Their night-eyes are keen, and unlike us they favor light kit and moving in small numbers. You must never take lightly the ascent along the long and rugged River Clyde."
With all his heart, Jarl Uhtred sent me a gaze full of concern.
Looking at that trustworthy and steadfast face, I thought to myself that had I waged war against Wessex in the south of Britain, the situation here might have taken a far more drastic turn.
'It was a good thing I came up.'
I had done well to halt the war in the south in time.
"How could I treat your counsel lightly? Uhtred of Bamburgh. I shall surely bear it in mind."
"I am merely grateful that you listened to my presumptuous words, Konungr."
Uhtred bowed his head courteously.
But I could not be deceived—he had not shaken off a lingering thread of worry.
[Tak!]
I placed a large hand on the shoulder of his armor, which was smudged with dust here and there as if he had not taken it off for days, and spoke to him as he raised his head.
"Await good tidings, Uhtred. Your concern is warranted, but I am Helgi Ragnarsson."
"...It seems I had briefly forgotten, Konungr. That your name is Helgi Ragnarsson."
Uhtred's eyes, once filled with worry, gradually shifted toward strong conviction.
I and the host of 12,000 soon moved south and reached the mouth of the River Clyde.
*****
Fundamentally, whether it was my homeland of Scandinavia where Árós lay, or this place Britain—all of Europe was a land of waterways, but this place especially.
The lowlands stretching across western Vernika before entering the higher ground further north were, with a bit of exaggeration, half water and half land.
Walk a little and there was a stream, then a hill. Then some river would pop out and behind it another hill.
Seeing this, I was convinced: old Rome had not lacked the ability to occupy this place—they had simply given up because the land was truly worthless.
As someone who held several direct holdings on the isle of Britain, I could not overlook a threat to my rear, and so I endured this hardship...
And then the master and chief of this vicious natural environment, the river, revealed itself before us.
It was the gloriously named River Clyde.
"Over there—what is that?"
"Uh—it looks like a house, Konungr."
No enemies launching ambushes had yet appeared, but as I deployed scouts in all directions and personally rode to the head of the column to survey the front, a strange object came into view before me.
"That is a house?"
Upon the calmly flowing river stood wooden piers like those seen at a dockside, and at their ends, buildings of a generally round shape sat proudly displaying their pointed roofs.
'They called it the Gorge Kingdom—was it a kingdom on the water, then?'
A scene from a documentary I had once seen replayed automatically in my head. This terrifyingly capable brain of mine, which instantly retrieved any necessary information stored in the memories of my past life and present life, even if it had only glanced past.
The fleeting memory showed a Southeast Asian village that had been built entirely floating on water, along with scenes of Venice and various other aquatic cities...
But what lay before my eyes now looked closer to something more primitive than those sophisticated (?) cities.
Soon, the people inside those unidentified buildings finally took notice of my 1,000-strong vanguard unit, which was clearing the path ahead of the main force.
They made a ruckus with a clamorous noise and then at last the man who appeared to be their representative began to approach cautiously.
His movements were so cautious that it seemed like watching a toad clinging to the ground; I lightly touched Camembert's flank and moved forward.
[Dagr dakk! Dagr dakk! Dugu- dugu-]
How could the guards remain behind when the king advanced? As soon as Storolfr and Refil, who had come along on the reconnaissance, together with the cavalry, set their hooves thundering in unison, the stranger turned ashen, tried to turn and flee, and tripped over his own feet.
"Gahh!"
At the scream, as if he were dying, the villagers who had been huddled together watching hurriedly fled back inside their stilt houses.
[Dagr dakk! Dagr dakk!]
"Spare me! Spare me! I have lived a virtuous life! Spare me!"
'... I wasn't going to kill you.'
The man kept his head pressed to the earth and cried for mercy at the sound of hoofbeats right beside him. He stood a span shorter than us Norsemen and was so small in build that he even struck me as diminutive.
His hair was brown, and the material of his clothes was similar to our own.
The sentiment I felt toward the man who lay prostrate and trembling was voiced in my stead by Storolfr right next to me.
"Konungr! This man looks like our Cymry friends!"
"Indeed, Storolfr. He seems to be of that lineage."
He was probably of the ethnic group that could be classified as Celts, Britons, Gaels, and so on.
They were a people somewhat different from the Germanic stocks that could be sorted into Angles, Saxons, and Norsemen. Their speech was different, their culture was different, even their way of fighting was different.
Perhaps the somewhat blunt and rough words being exchanged above his head unsettled him; the man of the River Clyde, who had lifted his trembling head a little to roll his eyes about, froze completely the moment he saw my face.
"Cu... Cú Chulainn!"
"What? What did you just say all of a sudden! Cú... could it be that you have just insulted the Konungr!"
[Shuk-]
Storolfr, startled because the man had suddenly cried out, drew the great two-handed axe from his saddle and glared with bulging eyes, whereupon the man who had been staring vacantly at my face hurriedly lowered his head.
"Spare me! Spare me, my lord! I was wrong! I was wrong! I truly have lived a virtuous life!"
'At this point I was getting curious how virtuously he had lived.'
Because this whole affair seemed like a single scene from a farce, I, whose laughter escaped me, raised Örn's hand to calm Storolfr and then made the man who lay groveling on the ground rise.
"I will not bring the slightest harm upon you; lift your body. Man of the River Clyde."
"Yes...! Eh...?"
The man, who had begun to nod and straighten himself up without realizing it because familiar words and sentences reached his ears, soon perceived that I had spoken in their tongue.
Surprise and wonder, joy and suspicion were all mingled together in his eyes, and it was quite amusing to behold.
"M-my name is Ailpein...! Your eminence. May I dare to ask your name?"
The man who had been shivering and crying for mercy, perhaps because he had heard familiar speech, seemed to have regained his composure.
"Certainly. Ailpein of the River Clyde. I am called Helgi. I am the master of Edinburgh and Bamburgh."
"Edinburgh!"
Even if he did not know Bamburgh well, he had evidently heard of Edinburgh somewhere, for Ailpein repeated the name.
Immediately after that, as if he had realized that I was the lord of the very land the Kingdom of Strathclyde had attacked, he pressed his head to the ground again and began to tremble all over.
"Spare me, Rí! I and the people of this village have nothing whatever to do with what the Rí of Alt Clut does! Our clan does not even follow the Rí, and moreover we are a small number of good people!"
'... I said I wasn't going to kill you.'
What kind of life had this man led?
I had to soothe Ailpein, who was now even on the verge of weeping, in a low voice.
After all, I needed to extract everything I could about the Kingdom of Strathclyde from this man, who was certain to be well-informed about this place.
"I swear before the name of your god and my god. Your life and the lives of those people shall be safe."
Heads poked out through the narrow entrances of the stilt houses.
The eyes in the darkness were blue and brown, and so various that every one of them observed this spot intently.
"Thank you...! Thank you...!"
Ailpein spoke in a voice choked with emotion and slowly rose with cautious movements.
"Then, can you now explain those buildings to me? And I am also curious about the place called Alt Clut that looms beyond this river, and about its Rí."
"I shall tell you everything! Helgi Rí!"
"You have my thanks."
[Pururuk! Pureuk! Chok!]
When I stepped on Camembert's saddle and dismounted onto the ground, the soft ground received my body.
[Chok! Chok! Chok!]
My subordinates dismounted from their horses all at once, following my example.
Yet Ailpein, as though he paid no heed at all to the vigor and discipline of my subordinates, merely stared up at my face, which must have seemed a full four heads taller than his own, with his mouth gaping wide.
"Helgi Rí...! Are you perhaps... Cú Chulainn reborn!?"
"..."
He had been calling me Cú Chulainn since earlier, but who was that?
☆☆☆☆☆Reference☆☆☆☆☆
NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Firth of Forth
The word 'Forth' itself is a proper noun hehe. In our language, 'bay' would be the correct translation...! That word itself shares a root with the Norse word 'fjord'...!
As Helgi's attention shifts toward northern Northumbria, northern Britain, Helgi's true battle begins...!
author of source image, plus my modifications (myself), CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The countless streams of western Vernika...
The black circle marks the River Clyde and its tributaries.
Do you see Dumbarton at the very end? That place is Alt Clut, the capital whose name means 'rock of the River Clyde.'
Christine Westerback / Crannog
The stilt house that caught Helgi's attention.
That's a crannog lol lol lol
What on earth is this...?
It appears widely across Gaelic cultures—Irish, Celtic, Pictish. It looks similar to the Atlantic roundhouse...!
Helenabella, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is what the entrance looks like.
The terror that the people holding their breath between those gaps must have felt as they watched the conversation between Helgi and Ailpein...!